When tech giants like Microsoft and Amazon flatten their org charts in 2025, they’re implicitly asking a question: how many direct reports can one manager realistically handle before things break? Culture, remote work, and AI tools all change the rules. Recent studies suggest that while more direct reports may seem efficient, beyond a certain point, there’s a rapid drop in effectiveness, morale, and performance. In this article, you’ll learn what the research says about ideal spans of control, why managing too many people imposes real business costs, and what leaders can do to stay sharp without burning out.
When Performance and Manageability Collide
The question of “how many is too many” has long followed managers. Research and practice both suggest that somewhere between five and nine direct reports is the sweet spot—enough to foster diversity of thought and workload distribution, but not so many that individual coaching and oversight collapse. And yet, the average number of direct reports for CEOs nearly doubled from the 1980s to the 2000s, reflecting not just changing business structures but the rising complexity of leadership itself.
But numbers only tell part of the story. Once spans stretch too far, the cracks are less about arithmetic and more about erosion of the fundamentals. Coaching is the first to suffer: one-on-one meetings shrink, get pushed, or become perfunctory. Development conversations shift from tailored to generic, leaving high-potential employees under-supported.
Administratively, managers become bottlenecks, fielding more requests and approvals than they can reasonably handle. Every new report compounds the coordination load, creating friction that slows down decisions rather than enabling them.
Engagement follows a similar curve. Quantum Workplace data shows that as spans grow to about eight or nine, managers feel both challenged and supported, and teams report having adequate access. Beyond that, both sides lose. Managers burn out under the weight of competing demands; employees feel less visible, less coached, and less connected. This isn’t just about morale. When development stalls, talent pipelines weaken. When approvals drag, market responsiveness slows. When managers disengage, turnover ticks up.
Context matters too. A senior, autonomous team working closely in one location might sustain wider spans with little friction. A junior or geographically dispersed team often cannot. The Economist noted in 2025 that proximity, role complexity, and employee autonomy are just as influential as the number of employees. That reality is borne out in recent “flattening” experiments in Big Tech, where companies traded layers of management for broader spans. The result was mixed: efficiency gains on paper, but a cultural and retention cost that proved harder to ignore.
The lesson isn’t that there is one “correct” number. It’s that pushing beyond manageable limits has predictable business consequences—stalled growth for employees, sluggish decisions for the organization, and higher attrition for both. The optimal span is less a formula than a balancing act: where performance and manageability intersect.
What Leaders Should Do to Stay Effective
Research is clear: while the optimal number of direct reports varies by industry and context, leaders who stretch their span too far risk undermining both their teams and themselves. Korn Ferry notes that once managers cross the 10–12 report mark, productivity per employee often drops, largely because coaching and decision quality suffer. But leaders can apply proven practices to manage larger spans without losing effectiveness.
Audit your current load
List direct reports alongside other hidden obligations—mentorship, cross-functional approvals, dotted-line oversight. Harvard Business Review highlights that leaders systematically underestimate the time consumed by indirect responsibilities, which often push them from proactive leadership into reactive firefighting. If more than half of your management hours are spent on reactive tasks, it’s a signal that your span may already be too wide.
Categorize work by complexity
Research from The Economist shows managers handle larger spans more effectively when teams are highly autonomous or tasks are standardized. By contrast, knowledge-heavy or developmental roles demand narrower spans to sustain oversight and coaching. Leaders who recognize this difference early can set more realistic expectations for themselves and their teams.
Delegate to proxy leaders
Organizational design studies suggest that businesses with structured “lead-of-leads” models—where senior employees assume coaching or triage duties—avoid bottlenecks while maintaining managerial oversight. Developing team leads not only reduces span strain but also builds succession depth.
Systematize feedback
Teams with structured one-on-one cadences reported 28% higher engagement than those relying on ad hoc check-ins. Leaders with broader spans can rotate deeper reviews among reports or pair group check-ins with digital tools for continuity.
Use technology wisely
Project dashboards, asynchronous updates, and shared performance tools reduce the need for constant verbal updates. Digital systems can automate up to 20% of routine coordination tasks, freeing managers to focus on strategy and coaching.
Adjust span dynamically
Span isn’t static; it shifts with growth, restructuring, or the adoption of remote work. HBR recommends that leaders revisit their team structure at least annually, recognizing that what worked during periods of stability may collapse under rapid scaling or increased regulatory complexity.
The throughline is simple: leadership effectiveness isn’t measured by the number of people you oversee, but by how consistently you can provide clarity, feedback, and strategic direction. Spans that stretch too wide make that impossible.
Why Span of Control Is a Business Issue, Not Just an HR Metric
Span of control isn’t just a structural decision—it shows up in the numbers that matter most to a business. When managers take on too many people, productivity per employee falls, not because people work less hard, but because their energy gets trapped in friction. Decisions move more slowly. Approvals pile up. Teams wait for clarity that never comes.
Span of control may look like an internal management design choice, but research shows it has direct financial consequences. Studies published in Harvard Business Review and by Korn Ferry demonstrate that when spans widen beyond 10 to 12, not only do coaching and feedback falter, but productivity per employee can fall by double digits. Engagement is consistently tied to retention and profitability.
Turnover costs alone are significant: Recent figures estimate that replacing an employee costs anywhere from half to twice their salary. When managers can’t give attention, coaching, or clarity, employees disengage and leave, creating a silent tax on growth. Operationally, wider spans also increase decision bottlenecks, slowing product launches, deal cycles, or customer responses. In a competitive environment, the ability to move quickly matters as much as managing costs.
For small businesses or growing firms, these dynamics are even sharper. Leaders wearing multiple hats often think “flatter is faster,” but without structure, span overload leads to slower growth, stalled development pipelines, and preventable turnover.
Conclusion
Managing too many direct reports isn’t a test of endurance—it’s a strategic risk. Beyond a certain point, the tradeoffs are predictable: slower decisions, weaker coaching, stalled development, and higher attrition.
The solution isn’t about hitting a magic number but about designing a span of control that leaders can actually manage. This involves building proxy structures, establishing reliable feedback loops, and revisiting the design as teams and markets evolve.
Certainty in leadership comes from knowing that every person on your team gets the clarity, coaching, and direction they need to move the business forward. In a fast-moving economy, that clarity is more than a management best practice—it’s a competitive advantage.
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